HIS LIFE AND WORK 



birth-year as McCormick, Poe and Mendelssohn 

 had begun to be known as men of genius in 

 1831. But Lincoln was then "a sort of clerk" 

 in a village store. Darwin was setting out on 

 H. M. S. Beagle upon his first voyage as a 

 naturalist. Gladstone was a student at Oxford. 

 Proudhon was working at the case as a poor 

 printer. Oliver Wendell Holmes was somewhat 

 aimlessly studying law. Chopin was on his way 

 to Paris. Tennyson had left college, without a 

 degree, to devote his life to the service of poetry. 

 Three great men who had been born earlier, 

 Garrison, Whittier, and Mazzini, began their 

 life-work in 1831. And science was a babe in 

 the cradle. Herbert Spencer, Virchow and Pas- 

 teur were learning the multiplication table. 

 Huxley was six and Bertheiot four. 



There was no Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, 

 California, nor Texas. Virginia was the main 

 wheat State. Local famines were of yearly 

 occurrence. The period between 1816 and 1820 

 had been one of severe depression and was 

 bitterly referred to as the " 1800-and-starve-to- 

 death" period. Seventy-five thousand people 



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